


Love Deepens Round the Hearth

by Kivrin



Series: Through All the Length of Days [1]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3978184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin/pseuds/Kivrin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas Eve, 1942.  After the events of "Bleak Midwinter," Paul Milner accepts Edith Ashford's invitation to spend Christmas with her family in Haslemere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Deepens Round the Hearth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ABeckoningCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABeckoningCat/gifts).



Days ago Paul had been a suspect. He’d been suspended. He’d been taken to a cell in his own station. And yet, somehow, here he was, hanging up his frost-dusted coat over Edith’s on the overburdened hooks in the hall, talking war news with Mrs. Ashford and teaching certification with Martin, helping to mop up the mess when one of the children overturned a cup of hot milk, and being sent along with Edith’s oldest sister Amelia to the kitchen to rinse the damp towels as if he were no guest at all but a member of the family. He took a turn reading from the nativity story in St. Luke when Mr. Ashford passed the Bible around, and stood just behind the inner ring as the children hung their stockings from the heavy mantel. Little five-year-old Iris even hugged him as she said “goodnight, Mr. Milner,” before being marched off to bed.

He sat in a corner of the sitting room, marveling at it all, while Edith and her mother filled the stockings, and Martin and his father made a last check of the blackout curtains. Then Mr. and Mrs. Ashford said good night as well, and it was just Martin, and him, and Edie.

“Is it more of a crowd than you were expecting?” she asked. “I forget how loud Jack and Daisy and Iris can be.”

“It’s more wonderful than I imagined,” he answered, shyly taking her hand. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ for coming.” Edith smiled, and then frowned and covered his hand with her own. “Paul, you’re cold!”

He was, but he’d not thought anything of it. It always took time to thaw after a long unheated journey, even if you were lucky enough to land somewhere with fuel for heating. “Not so bad.”

“Sit nearer the fire. Here, so you get the heat on your left side.” Edith led him to the armchair her father had vacated, and settled herself on the footstool by his knee. “Martin, put the kettle on, please.”

“I’m all right,” Paul assured her, though he couldn’t hold back a shiver.

“Of course, but I want you more than all right. I want you snug. And happy.” She took his right hand in both of hers, and then, when Martin had vanished into the kitchen, brought it to her lips.

The words _I am_ melted unspoken in Paul’s mouth. Her kiss made him tremble again, not entirely with cold, though the contrast between her lips and his knuckles seemed so sharp he almost expected to see steam rising between them.   “Edith,” he whispered. He raised his left hand, reaching for her cheek, but fearing his touch would chill her, he laid it on her sleeve instead. The rough serge of her suit jacket, made over from one of her father’s, caught against his palm.   He blinked suddenly stinging eyes. “I keep expecting to wake up.”

She frowned in confusion.

“But it’s real. I can feel…” He raised his left leg slightly, letting the metallic scrape of the ankle joint sound in the quiet room. “I can hear the planes. I know the war’s still on, I know I haven’t got my leg back. But somehow… by some miracle… _you."_ Paul gripped her fingers harder. “You and me." He shook his head in wonder.

Edith kissed his hand again, then rubbed it between her palms. “Your gloves are half holes. I’m sure I can find a spare set of mittens you can wear over them tomorrow, just for the walk to church.” From the kitchen there came a rumbling of water in the pipes, and then a noisy gush as Martin filled a kettle. Edith looked up at him, and said rapidly, under the noise,   “Paul, I am sorry. For what I said about… what happened.”

“No.” He shook his head.   “You weren’t thinking about it as I would. Not like a policeman. You were thinking…”

Her eyes lit. "Like a wife. Now,” she went on, briskly, “did you get wet, coming up from the station?” With her free hand she reached down to check the left cuff of his trousers.

“Maybe a little.”

She _tsked_ and nudged him into putting his feet up on the stool beside her, so they’d be even with the high hearth. “The metal conducts temperature, you know,” Edith said. “If it gets cold it’ll chill you, even if you don’t feel it at first. You mustn’t think you’re impervious to puddles.”

It was the sort of caution he’d been given in hospital, and when he’d been fitted with the prosthetic, but the little unnecessary touches that accompanied it, and the concern in Edith’s voice, made it entirely new. “I won’t,” he assured her, and felt a soft rush of heat as palpable as the opening of an oven door when she smiled in response. “Is this what it was like on Christmas Eve when you were growing up?”

“Mostly. Of course we lived in Hastings then, but reading the scripture and hanging our stockings… that’s all the same.” She squeezed his hand again. “I’ll fetch you a rug, just a moment.”

“Edie,” he protested, but she quieted him with another glowing smile. He felt much warmer already, but he let her wrap the knitted afghan around his shoulders and across his lap, then rub his hands again between her slim, strong ones. Paul swallowed against an emotion he hardly dared to name. _How can this be?_ he wondered again.

As a constable walking a beat, Paul had seen how in an instant a crowd could turn from cheerful to ugly or a drunk could go from maudlin to murderous. And at Trondheim he’d learned even more sharply how a single moment could slice a life into mismatched portions: a sun-drenched before and a blood-soaked after. But that he could find himself transported equally swiftly from cold loneliness and fear to a seat in a family circle… that felt as shocking as Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic.

Martin brought out a teapot and two mugs, then excused himself back to the kitchen for secret Christmas-dinner preparations. He left the door open, chaperoning them in the lightest possible way.

“It’s chamomile and rose hip,” Edith said as she poured, “not real tea, but it’s hot.” She held out the mug, then, when he hesitated, sat on the arm of the chair to wrap one of his hands around it and use her own to guide it to his lips.

He should have taken it himself, and pushed her hand away. He should have been embarrassed by the offered help, and ashamed at accepting when he didn’t need it, but all he felt was comfort, and a quiet joy at her nearness. The tisane tasted flowery and tart, more delicate and soothing than tea. He drank deeply.

Edith let her free arm settle around his shoulders, over the rug, and rubbed his arm through it. “Warmer?”

He leaned against her, thinking _More than I’ve been since 1940. No, since I was a boy._ Could he dare to say that? She brushed a kiss over his hair, then trailed her fingers against his cheek. _Perhaps… in a few minutes?_   “Getting there,” he whispered against her shoulder.

She smiled: he could feel it when her lips touched him again, and hear it when she answered, “Good,” with all the warmth of summer.


End file.
